


The Last Tryst Before the End

by AngelicEclair



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 07:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18177698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelicEclair/pseuds/AngelicEclair
Summary: Ardyn Izunia tries to convince himself that The Reader is of no consequence, so leaving her won't hurt as bad. He recalls their final day together as he makes his way back to the ruined Crown City of Insomnia.





	The Last Tryst Before the End

It would be in any creature’s rudimentary predisposition to expect at least _one_ last tryst before the end - to fulfill the earthly desire before the final fall from grace.

Perhaps, it was because it was such a primal, base function and a reminder of the intensity of the senses and mortality as bodies folded into bliss and die for just a moment, wilting and shivering like moon-frosted blossoms.

Sex along with pain was what often made humans most aware of themselves. Ardyn Izunia had ceased to be human long ago, but he wasn’t quite infallible nor beyond a coquettish siren’s aria. He was always grateful for moments when he was allowed _almost_ feel a twinge in his tranquilized heart. He was drawn to the pure and unburdened – the sylph darlings and fresco nymphs. They subconsciously reminded him of the magnanimous finance that was ripped away from him lifetimes ago.

He predominantly fancied the coy, inexperienced ones. Was it all because they were easier to corrupt and fill with Starscourge of the cerebral kind? Or, did a sliver of him _envy_ their naivety? They were _so_ unlike him, nearly as diametric as day and night. He was definitely not at all the saint he externalized, he still fell everyone in his gaze. His shadowy charm was the tempting enchantment that obscured his rather flamboyant ruthlessness.

Once the theatrical curtain had dropped away, you could see him for who he had become. He wasn’t a benign old sage, a man of no consequence, but ambiguous, a paradoxical anomaly, whose beguiling, velvet speak veiled his watchful, capricious heartlessness.

He lived a life he could not begin to translate into mere words or even consciousness, so serial philandering became his sonnet, his hymn, his craftmanship. It was the only wine that got him inebriated enough to quiet his phantasms howling in his mind.

Two-thousand years ago, Ardyn’s mind was filled with hope and steely fortitude. He was an empathetic, munificence, idealistic, but a quixotic man who sought to save all of Eos from Starscourge with his halcyon methods: healing all those afflicted, despite knowing of the dreadful impact on himself. It eventually transformed him into the Scourge's living incarnation, just as he fretted. The Crystal and the Gods soon came to reject him, having been smeared with defiling soot. With the unfairness of his maltreatment, he became twisted, cold, and vindictive. He became a vengeful immortal, fully willing to put all of the world in grave peril, purely to spite the Astrals and get revenge on his already long-dead brother.

However, above all else screaming inside him, the loudest of all was still _regret_. Regret for having become the very thing he tried so meticulously to prevent. He existed in a state of numb quandary. Most suiting, a cold, umbratic gloom surrounded him. The lumbering clouds, the skeletal trees, and the air he breathed were all infested with the Scourge he had wrought upon the world.

The scent of ruination was acrid and charcoal like ammonia, layered with the foul stench of something like burnt roses covered in scorched sulfur. Every was inch of terrain was saturated in an ever-growing blackness that the Gods themselves could not repel. The once opulent gardens of the courtyards were withering away with each passing day; the sun was no longer visible; the blessed, life-giving star had been snuffed out by the thick clouds years ago.

Beyond the colorless fields, the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. He passed ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like gigantic ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, were office buildings, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.

‘How did I get here?’ Ardyn wondered, feeling a pang of remorse. It was quickly refilled with fresh self-entitlement like the tide sweeping over rock pools.

The Chancellor chose to live exclusively in the present, but the present was rather suffocating. He did what he had to…but _the cost_ …

‘What a strange life I have led.’ With a somber smile, he shook his head.

Even in the most unusual situations, the most unpredictable ones, he had accepted it all as necessary. Time and time again, as he experienced seasons, he formed relationships. He watched as they all died of errors and betrayals, of illness and wounds, of age, and of weariness. As time ticked by, he distanced himself more and more

It is a curious thing. Ardyn knew best of all that a human’s time in the world is limited, and that eventually everyone will end up underneath a sheet, never to wake up again. And yet, it was always a surprise when it happened to someone he knew. It was like walking up the stairs in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot lurched forward, but there is no step, and there is a nauseating moment of disbelief.

Ardyn had done his best to expel all his remaining concern. He forced to see all who he found himself attached to as lowly pawns. The sympathetic, philanthropic nature he was born with was but a fizzling ember.

The dream of sweet demise that he’d been chasing for eons would be coming to fruition. He always thought leaving the earthly plane behind would be as simple and thoughtless of blinking. He would finally be reunited with his beloved, and the tormenting, waking nightmare would finally be chased from his mind as death consumed him.

 _The Accursed_ , _The Usurper_ , _Darkness of the Legends_ , _Adagium_ , spiteful and wicked, made his way through the moribund forest behind the Crown City. He moved like a marble statue of a fallen angel or like swirls of red-violet watercolor paint over the monochrome of the dying world. His shoes left shallow prints upon the fragile, browning grasses with every step he took. His stride, though as graceful as the blessed summer rains, was uneven and painful. He had been walking for several miles, and he had several more to go still. Despite his agony, he continued the journey, taking in the sight of the dead trees as he passed them by.  He recalled rambling about the royal gardens, watching white butterflies waltz across bright, healthy blooms.

Reality snapped back in front of him, daunting, as if he were seeing it for the first time. White blossoms dead and falling from crooked trees were the only sound. There was such a smell of rot. Though he never liked to admit it, when he was much younger, he often thought about of losing control.  It was irrational, to a degree, to ignore the existence of the _irrational_. The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primeval impulses he’d worked so hard to subdue.

Having the world be brutish for over a thousand years was more than enough time to make him become delusional and restless inside. The obstinate little voice in his head grew to torment him so.

As he continued on his way, recalling the many faces he had seen, the names he had learned, the people he had healed, the people he had harmed.

Though, there was one person that he found himself thinking of over and over as he crested the hill.

_(Y/N)_

The horizon erased itself, leaving him marooned, adrift, in an incomplete dreamscape, a kind of skewed version of the familiar world, where the old landmarks were recognizable but spaced too far apart, and disarranged.

He hummed to himself, only realizing a few paces after that it was the tune the music box on (Y/N)’s vanity would play. He sighed.

Admittedly, it was much easier to think of her as just another brain to pick, like a vulture strips a carcass bare. Perhaps, a mere confidant at most. A safe place to fall, perhaps?

No, she was more like an unselfish lover – someone to fill the cracks exploding across his skin and filling it with liquefied gold, repairing him, but only briefly. It was more than anyone else could have done.

Her hair smelled like hyacinth and would leave behind the ghost of the scent on his pillows after she had left. She was marvelous and the one constant in his gravelly disjointed life.  It was easy when he killed his feelings the first time, stomping out the flame. But his feelings reemerged from the ashes like flowers after being stepped on. The effloresce climbed high and wrapped around his neck like a noose. There was no escaping the vice of fondness.

Her light seemed to surpass that of the moon, which Ardyn found himself admiring like a surreal coin every night as he stayed awake with his thoughts. She was comforting like the moon’s nonjudgmental light. She understood the divine duty the Six had bestowed upon him. She knew the poor soul was probably aching for a release. Though it made her sick to think of outliving an immortal, she knew it was best for him to disappear. But he would not be wiped from history. She would remember him.

 _Now_ , leaving proved to be the source of a dull ache in his chest. He was leaving one love behind for another. Admitting it to himself felt like hot spikes in his veins. He supposed it had to be this way. He hoped his beloved would understand the weakness of his flesh and forgive him.

 _Oh_ , Aera had so much to forgive him for.

Their love was fatal - clear and burning.

As he walked in silence, he recalled his last time with (Y/N).

He was stretched out in the window seat, a book open on his chest, enjoying the afternoon sun. He no longer needed to sleep, but closing his eyes and pretending was somewhat refreshing and an optimal time for planning.

As if walking into the memory, Ardyn took in a breath and stopped in his tracks. He remembered how her room looked that day.

It was a picturesque room – airy and spacious. The ceiling was tall, frescoed and plaster-medallioned. The walls were a serene eggshell. The warm breeze quivered in the curtains. In the corner, was a big round table with tea cups, pastry plates, books, an unfinished game of chess. There were glass fronted bookcases, and a chandelier dripping with prisms and strings of crystal beading that sparkled in the low lights.

Insomnia was falling to pieces, so for a change of scenery while he awaited Noctis and his entourage, he was a continual guest at (Y/N)’s dwelling.

Gathered lupine and dog roses sat on a writing desk, on the table, and the windowsills. Their smell hung rich and heavy in the air, mingled with the smell bergamot, of black tea, and the faint ink scent of camphor. Breathing deep, he felt intoxicated.

Embellished rugs, porcelains, ornate paintings. It was if he had stepped into a paradisal church.

And he was aware of _her_ presence.

She padded barefoot across the room and stood beside him. With a soft smile, she slowly reached a hand out and gently ran her fingers through his soft hair. She then leaned down and placed a kiss on his forehead. Unable to stop herself, she leaned further down to place another gentle one on his lips. His golden eyes pried open and his lips stretched into a knowing smile.

_‘O darling mine, pure minx, angelic vixen, monogamous harlot.’_

The last dying hours of day were spent kissing and feeling, but nothing more. Nothing intrusive.

Beheld by the four walls of her bedroom were her stockings falling, her lips glossed, sacred and profane. Candles illuminated their huddled forms, and the shadows of the vase of fresh flowers stretched out and covered the bed in a black lace.

He sang her body electric and made her feel everything ancient sonnets crooned about, but that darkness in him was not ignorable. It was deadly apparent and spun (Y/N)’s stomach into knots. She fed both his seraphic and demonic sides equally, exulting all facets of his character. As every time she was intimate with the Chancellor, (Y/N) felt honored, felt unworthy, and so, so small beneath him. Every time night fell, his hands would creep towards her body before skittering across the flesh. As the kneading and smoothing grew more fervent, all the minor pains in her body dulled.

It felt like healing. Perhaps there was some genuineness in the term “sexual healing” when it came to Ardyn. However, the sanative overdose gave way to a heavy draining, siphoning sensation that dappled her vision with black dots that seemed to grow wider.

She felt as if she was floating over her own body. Was this some sort of psychical sexual hallucination?

Ardyn’s mind often drifted towards more animal acts, such as depriving his little swan of air and only loosening his grip when she reached climax. He pondered summoning the scourge to further soil her virtue, the otherworldly appendages wrapping around her form in restriction. He had been rough in the past, but how would (Y/N) handle such debauchery?

Something in him couldn’t bring himself to be wicked to her trusting flesh. She was but a dove in his care. Perhaps, the last unpolluted soul in all of Eos.

The girl breathed out in small gasps, becoming afraid of passing out from giddiness alone. Contented while also fearful, (Y/N) was falling into a pleasant trance.

Something delicious surged up from deep in her abdomen. The feeling blossomed and pulsed. His fingers had slipped into her panties while distracted by his lips molding against the pulse on her neck. The simple movements were pure, unadulterated bliss. Just to her the suction of his lips against the crook of her neck, trailing towards her collar bone was orgasmic. It set her nerves ablaze, and she shuddered as she tried to suck in a breath.

“You’re so wet, my love.”

(Y/N)’s flesh peaked with chills. A thick finger slowly dipped into her and sent gratuitous warmth up her spine. As he curled his finger, she heard the squish of her wet flesh. Ardyn hummed and a honey-glow filled every cell in her body. He was bent on trying to make (Y/N) squirm or cringe out of embarrassment. His favorite thing was having her shyly, tuck her face into his neck as he touched her. He could always feel the warmth of her cheek on his bare skin.

 ‘Oh, _Astrals_ ,’ The girl whimpered. A ripple shot though his cock at her bashful whine.

His finger dipped out of her hole and slid up to her swollen bud, coating it in her arousal. His fingers glided across in a gentle zig-zag, and (Y/N) let out a slow sigh, moving her hips in time with him.

She heard the low hiss of breath from him, as his hands gripped the soft hollow of the back of her knee, pushing it back to meet her chest. He had full view of her glossy slit which he began probing his finger into faster and faster, searching for the spot that would send her keening into the heavens high. He feigned surprise and tutted (Y/N) like you would to a misbehaving child.

“You’re positively _dripping_ , my dear.”

(Y/N) closed her eyes, tilt her head back slightly, and let her nerves continue their gentle shivering. He leaned back against the bed and pulled her up, slowly teasing her panties down until they dropped to the bed. He pulled her onto his lap, forcing her to straddle him. He gave her a debonair smirk and gripped her hips tightly. His impatience was made ostensible by his blunt nails pressing into her soft skin. She carded a hand through his wine-colored hair and chewed the inside of her cheek in anticipation. She stared into his eyes with her hauntingly familiar gaze.

Without being asked, she lowered herself onto his thick, beautifully-curved girth, enjoying the sensation of him filling her up. It was if he had possessed her.

 “A-A…Ardyn…More… _Please_.” She gasped, furious with lust. Trembling, gasping and trying to maintain the motion of her own hips, she tried to ride his cock with all her might. The cries only became more vocal as she built up a slow rhythm, enjoying the friction as she took him in deep. A static hum grew in her thighs as their bodies met desperately, over and over. The Chancellor was becoming more unhinged with jagged thrusts. The playful, mischievous feelings from before were replaced unadulterated desire and greed. His only focus was how good she felt, but what would come of him the next day.

“My, _my_ …Already?” Ardyn crooned, his deep voice rolling over her like a tide of honey. “You might have bitten off more than you can chew.”

He began jutting his hips up to meet hers, a warm tongue poking out to lave circles around her chilled nipples.

“Mm, that’s the ticket. You’re such an obedient little pet, isn’t that right? Oh, _yes_.”

 _Gods_ , he was going to miss this. He knew such human connection would not exist in the beyond.

The sheets felt like rough silk crepe against her overly-sensitive skin as her tired legs shifted, struggling to find relief from over-extension.

(Y/N) mewled and pawed at Ardyn’s toned shoulders for purchase.

The friction and alarming depth of his thrusts drew her closer to that desperately-needed culmination. She tightened around him

 _‘Oh, what a dreamy pet!’_ His mind exclaimed.

“There’s a good girl.” He crooned, pulling her down into his lap by her buttocks and lifting her up and down on him as though she weighed nothing at all. He began thrusting violently into (Y/N). Every impact sent her breasts bouncing and the burning stretch recedes into a deep, roiling pleasure. Ardyn chuckled pridefully at the mess he was making her.

The sound of his voice caused her walls to flutter involuntarily. Of course, he noticed.

“What are you thinking about that has you clenching _so_ tight around me?” He huffed hotly against her graceful neck.

“Mm? Could it be because we’ve only just begun and you’re already about to lose control?” He smiled, dark and feline, before pulling her down into an ardent kiss, wrapping his arms around her back and successfully pinning her form to his. There’s a bizarre tenderness to his embrace; a stark contrast to the violence pounding.

His lips carried a flavor to (Y/N) couldn’t place, but his tongue in her mouth has her melting into a carefree, nearly sedated state. When he pulled away for air, (Y/N), in her hazy stupor, thought she noticed a black smudge over her lover’s lips.

It must have been a trick of the candlelight.

“Cum for me now, darling.” He was smiling, but there was a polar chill in his wolfish eyes. “I’m not asking, I’m telling you.”

Ardyn worked at her clit with his calloused thumb. (Y/N)’s release had bubbled up and materialized with almost no effort at all. She could have lost herself as soon as his hands feathered over her thighs.

“Ardyn! It feels…so good! I can’t take it!”

Ardyn was delighted by her breathless elation.

“What a precious little thing you are.”

She snapped at the sound of his gravelly voice, her back arching toward the ceiling, her orgasm crackling like fireworks in her bloodstream. It shook her, blinded her, and wrenched a noise so foreign from her throat.

“ _Mmm_ …”

Ardyn couldn’t take the vice grip of her insides as they fluttered and milked him. He crumbled over her body, sweating, shivering.

(Y/N) was sated and bewildered, her tense muscles released and she shuddered with bliss. It felt as though her joints had collapsed and the Ardyn had stolen her breath for his own. The aftershocks of his own orgasm vibrated through his core and he growled. For a moment, it was if he had full feeling back – body, mind, and spirit.

The vision faded. Ardyn was leering like a fox that had just slipped out of the chocobo pen while he walked, but it fell as he remembered (Y/N) lying in bed next to him after their little escapade. He recalled what he purred into her ear as she fell into peaceful slumber:

_“I’m very grateful for your existence in my life.”_

Echoes reverberated in his hollow, aching chest. If his heart could break again, it would have.

He recalled early morning. The room was already suffused with a lilac gray and the gulls were beginning to squawk and wheel outside the window.

(Y/N) yawned, stirred, but turned over still unconscious. I waited for the dawn. Doing what ? I don’t know. What I had to do. I watched for the window. I gave rein to my pains, my impotence.

She had the same compassionate glint in her eyes as Aera did. He had said goodbye to his love once, but having to meet her eyes and know it would be for the last time hurt worse than anything he endured in Angelgard.

He hummed before sweeping the hair out of her face and placing a kiss on her temple, taking a long look at (Y/N)’s sleeping form before striding for the door.

His actions slowed to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of his hand, the sentence spoken, filled an eternity.

_“Fare thee well.”_


End file.
